I got a new Nokia Lumia 822 on Verizon Wireless yesterday and I noticed the signal strength is reading differently (way less) than the signal strength on my old iPhone 4. Why would that be? Should I be concerned?

I also seem to recall reading somewhere a while back that the signal strength displayed on the iPhone was rather "optimistic," so to speak. I'd agree with mio_BB - testing is the only way to know for certain. Is there even a standard for how the signal strength is displayed? If no, then that would lead me to think the phone's maker, or the OS maker, could show you whatever they wanted to show you.

The number of signal bars basically mean nothing because Apple uses a different method to calculate how many bars to display than Nokia.

In fact, due to the "antennagate" issue with iPhone4, in response Apple after launch increased the number of bars displayed visually even though it did not necessarily correspond to a signal quality increase. It was a way of addressing customer fears over poor reception with iPhone4 due to the antennagate issue, even if the original method of calculation may have been more acccurate.

In other words, the only real way to tell signal strength is to use both phones at the same time and see which does better in call quality and retaining calls, especially in fringe coverage areas.

My wife had a Verizon iphone 4 and I have the 822 and I can say the two don't compare for reception. My wife's iphone was horrible where we live, but my Lumia gets 3G inside our house most of the time. Without wifi the iphone couldn't stream video while my Lumia can and I don't have the issues making calls she had. Like others have said, don't go by the bars, make calls and use data and see how they do.